Quaint cottages now pricey properties

Sunday

May 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 27, 2007 at 7:20 AM

By Si Cantwell, Staff Writer

In 1935, Bill Creasy's father bought the lot at 6 Channel Ave. in Wrightsville Beach for $750.Almost 30 years later, Tony Hare's mother bought the second-row house at 222 Ocean Blvd. West in Holden Beach for around $8,000.Today, with a modest three-bedroom house on it, Creasy's property is carried on New Hanover County's tax rolls at a neat $2.2 million, up 238 percent just from 1999. Hare's childhood home is valued at more than $660,000 by Brunswick County.The soaring value of residential land on North Carolina's beaches has been both a boon and a potential burden for property owners. Some have reaped windfalls by selling, while many in New Hanover and Brunswick counties worry about whether they can foot the tax bills for homes and land that have been in their families for generations.At the same time, another trend has emerged that can best be described as "big." Builders are erecting larger houses because the parcels they sit on cost so much more.Maximizing dollarsFrom the time North Carolina's barrier islands were developed until the 1980s and '90s, most beach cottages were small vacation homes for people who lived elsewhere. Some prosperous families built larger, rambling houses clad in cedar shingles and featuring wraparound porches. Beach houses were designed to be opened up and cooled by ocean breezes.Many of those homes were stocked with furniture brought from primary residences or with inexpensive pieces. Wicker and rattan were common.Now, many beach homes are much larger, more elaborate and made with better and more expensive materials.And more of them are year-round residences.In Carolina Beach, the permanent population grew from 1,080 in 1950 to 1,663 in 1970, a respectable clip. Then came the building boom of the 1980s, when more than 1,500 houses were built in the town. The beach has more than 5,600 full-time residents today.Virginia Williamson worked with her husband, Odell, developing Ocean Isle Beach. They sold their first oceanfront lot in 1953 for $1,000, she said. Second-row lots went for $750.Today, those lots sell for as much as $2 million, so the houses are bigger."Now they get just as high as the town will allow them, and they put all the rooms they can in them," she said. "They keep the beach air out and use air conditioning now. We used to open all the windows."Oak Island Mayor Johnie Vereen said beach houses in his town used to average around 750 to 900 square feet. Now they're 1,500 to 2,500 square feet, "and that's just medium." Some homes sprawl to more than 8,000 square feet."I think they're trying to maximize their dollars," he said. "It also prevents people with medium income from being able to buy homes down there."Bigger - and betterJoe Hearne has been building houses at Kure Beach since the 1980s. The first house he built on Clementree Lane sold for $95,000, he said. A midblock house with no ocean view recently sold on that block for $450,000, he said.He started out building three-bedroom houses of about 1,200 square feet, he recalled."Now the houses I'm building have anywhere from 2,400 to 2,900 square feet heated, plus garages," he said. They also have decks spanning 800 to 900 square feet, he said."Could you sell a 1,200-square-foot house? Probably, but with the price of lots it doesn't make economic sense," he said.The houses aren't just bigger, Hearn said. They're better, too, in many ways. He said wind codes have improved, and houses are made of more durable materials."In all the hurricanes" of recent years, he said, "houses I built didn't have any structural damage."Alan Holden has seen the evolution of houses at Holden Beach, which his family developed. He's owned a construction company, Sea Castles Inc., since 1978, and his father was a builder before that. He also owns Alan Holden Vacations, which handles beach rentals.The typical house constructed in the 1970s, he said, was 1,000 to 1,200 square feet and had two bedrooms. He began adding second stories and balconies in the early 1980s, but even into the early 1990s, most new houses remained no larger than 2,000 square feet.As property values rose in the 1990s and early this decade, demand for bigger houses exploded. By 2003 and 2004, he said, the average house had ballooned to 2,800 to 3,000 square feet, and featured a multitude of bathrooms, decks and balconies. Swimming pools became common for houses sitting next to the ocean.A more modest 1,400-square-foot house? Holden can't remember the last time he built one of those.From simple to 'mega-house'In the 1960s and '70s, Holden said, most houses were owned by working families from inland. Even wealthy people built modest cottages, he said, "for the simple lifestyle at the beach.""Now the upper-income person is the only one that can afford the land," he said. Oceanfront lots sell for a million dollars, and the cheapest lots on the island are around $300,000, Holden said.More homes are permanent or used as second homes, with fewer rentals."Wealthier people don't have to rent," he said.Although sales and construction have slowed dramatically this year, part of a national housing slump, the beach has added maybe a dozen "mega-houses" of six bedrooms or more each year for the past three years or so.Holden has seen swings in real estate demand through the years. He doesn't expect the trend toward bigger houses to change."We've been here before," he said. "It'll be back."Some long-time property owners are wondering how long they can stay on the beach as land values pull their property taxes higher.Hare, 58, was one of only a handful of kids who grew up living year-round at Holden Beach. He and his wife, Brenda, live in a three-bedroom house that survived Hurricane Hazel in 1954.Today, he said, "older houses are not worth the land they're sitting on.""With the way property values are going up," Hare said, "It's possible someday somebody will walk up and make an offer that will overwhelm me and I'll take it."Si Cantwell: 343-2364si.cantwell@starnewsonline.com

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